Guardrails

Beginner — What is a guardrail?

• A check limiting unsafe or invalid behavior at input, output, or tool boundaries.
• Examples include schemas, content checks, evidence validation, rate limits, business rules, and approval gates.

Intermediate — Does valid structured output mean safe output?

• No.
• A valid object can contain false facts or unauthorized action arguments.
• I validate shape, then check business meaning, ownership, evidence, and required approval independently.

Senior — What should fail closed?

• Permission, approval, and critical business-rule checks should block action when they cannot establish validity.
• For uncertain content or model availability, I use an appropriate clarification, template, search result, or human escalation rather than silently committing.

Scenario — A moderation check rejects legitimate injury descriptions. What do you do?

• I inspect domain-specific false positives, refine the policy and calibration dataset, and provide a permitted review path.
• Insurance support must handle legitimate sensitive content while minimizing private data and enforcing access.